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Creative Writing  Master's

Overview

What is Creative Writing at WVU like?

Description

The Master of Fine Arts at West Virginia University is a three-year program that combines work in a primary genre and at least one other genre with course offerings in literature, pedagogy and professional writing and editing.

Our alumni have gone on to further graduate study in English, to careers in editing and publishing and to positions in academia. They have received awards such as the Olive B. O’Connor Fellowship at Colgate and the Emory University Creative Writing Fellowship, won national prizes like the Iowa Award for Poetry and the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Prize for Nonfiction and published books with Autumn House Press, Carnegie Mellon University, 42 Miles Press, Ohio University Press, University of Georgia Press, University Press of New England and William Morrow/Harper Collins, among others.

WVU’s MFA graduates have published in hundreds of literary journals, including prestigious venues such as AGNI, Southern Review, Gettysburg Review, Field, Prairie Schooner, Tar River Poetry, Ninth Letter, Northwest Review, Missouri Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Sewanee Review, The Journal, 32 Poems, Georgetown Review, Controlled Burn, Colorado Review, Pank, Malahat Review, Mid-American Review, The New York Times, Paste, Times, Chelsea, Washington Square, Laurel Review, Slant, New Orleans Review, and in the anthology Layers of Possibility: Healing Poetry. Recent MFA students have won Intro Prizes sponsored by the Association of Writers and Writing Programs and the GreenTower Press’s chapbook prize and have published book-length collections of poetry and fiction. Recent graduates have won honors such as the Iowa Poetry Prize and the Walt Whitman Award.

WVU’s MFA faculty members, Mark Brazaitis, Mary Ann Samyn, Glenn Taylor, Christa Parravani, Jenny Johnson and Brian Broome, have published more than 25 books and have won many prestigious prizes and honors.

Application Deadlines

Each graduate program sets their own term of admission and application deadline. Applicants can only apply for admission for the term displayed below. Any questions regarding the application deadline should be directed to the graduate program representative.

Fall: January 15

At a Glance

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Requirements

What are the requirements to apply for Creative Writing at WVU?

University Requirements

To be eligible for admission into a graduate program at WVU an applicant must submit official, bachelors degree transcripts from a regionally accredited institution and hold a GPA of at least 2.75.

WVU operates decentralized admissions. Decentralized admissions allows each graduate program to set its own application requirements in addition to the University requirements.

Program Requirements

To be eligible for admission into the Creative Writing graduate program an applicant must submit the following documentation:

  • Letters of Recommendation - Three
  • Statement of Purpose
  • Essay/Writing Sample
  • Résumé /CV

Additional application requirements:

  • For the writing sample: a substantial writing sample in fiction, nonfiction or poetry

Certain application requirements may be waived based on a preliminary review of an application by program.

International Applicants must also submit the materials outlined here.

Contact Information

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